The basic idea behind a Page Object is that you get an object oriented representation of your website. The Page Objects maps the HTML (or JSON) to an object oriented structure you can interact with and assert on. This is more initial work then than writing tests with PHPUnit and Mink directly, but it can be worth the effort.

They use the Mnk testing tool to simulate a browser and some previously shared functionality to lay the foundation. From there they write up a first test using a "Login" page object and processing the username/password handling of the page. They show how to implement a custom page object with a bit of additional logic and put it to use in processing the request. They also include an update when, for example, a site is switched from Twig templates to a React.js component and how the Page object would need to be refactored for the update.

Adam Wathan has a new post to his site talking about mapping with collections and customizing the keys when injecting new data into your Laravel collections.

People often ask me, “how do I specify keys when I’m mapping a collection?”

It actually ends up being a pretty interesting topic, so I decided to cover it in a short screencast, as well as in written format below.

He shows how to translate a simple set of data into a much more slimmed down version. He points out that the "map" function could be used but it doesn't allow for setting keys. Instead he talks briefly about how the problem could be solved in Javascript (returning an object instead of an array) and how to use the "reduce" method to filter and reset the data as it goes through the array. He finishes out the post talking about learning from other languages, the "toAssoc" macro on Laravel collections and mapping the data back to an array with a custom macro.

PHP 5 introduces a destructor concept similar to that of other object-oriented languages, such as C++” says the documentation for destructors. [...] Well, as you can not call the constructor explicitly [...] so we should not call the destructor explicitly. The problem is that I’ve seen this many times, but it’s a pity that this won’t destroy the object and it is still a valid PHP code.

He talks about __destruct and it's role in PHP's set of "magic methods" and what they exist to do. He then gets into a few examples of what code could look like that uses a destructor and the difference between normal handling calling the destructor explicitly. The main differences is that calling it explicitly does not destroy the object, it's basically like calling any other method. He does include an interesting method for destroying the object - setting it to null - and notes that the destructor fires then too. He also points out a few interesting things about cloning objects and how object references work when setting nulls as in the previous example.

Andrew Carter has written up a new post about PSR-7 objects (the PHP-FIG defined standard for handling requests and responses in PHP applications) and how the objects themselves are immutable.

What’s happening [in the provided example] is that the Zend Expressive framework is rendering the error page to the same object that you wrote your message to. Whilst the actual message object itself is immutable, the body stream that it references is not. Even when this object is cloned or “modified” (to become a new object) it will still use the same stream.

He explains a bit about what this means in a more practical sense and why the PSR-7 standard and why this happens (as defined after much discussion). Then he gets into a more recent debate happening in the PHP-FIG about PSR-7 middleware and the proposal for a standard structure in its creation. He points to some of the thoughts from Anthony Ferrara on the topic and an example from Woody Gilk showing an exception handler and how having the stream always appending content is a bad thing in that particular case.

In a post to his site Mark Ragazzolooks at immutable objects - what they are and how they can be used in a PHP application with some "final" functionality.

In this short article we will see what immutable objects are and why we should consider to use them. Immutable object is an object that does not change its state after it was created. Immutable objects usually are very simple. You may already seen them as enum types or primitives like DateTimeImmutable.

Further in this article you will learn that making simple objects immutable may save significant amount of your time by making impossible to make certain types of mistakes.

He starts with a list of a few things to remember when implementing immutable objects (like using the "final" keyword) and problems that can come without them. He then gets into some examples, showing how to create immutable Address and Money objects and how to use them when you need to update/get values from the object. He also covers some common "accidental mutability" cases like leaking internal object references and inheritance problems.

Ibuildings has posted the fourth part of their "Programming Guidelines" series to their blog, sharing even more helpful hints and tips you can apply to your everyday development. In this new post author Matthias Noback talks about messaging in your application, not in output to the user but in the communication between parts of your system.

The Ibuildings blog has posted the latest part of their series looking at some general programming guidelines and principles that can help you in your own development work. In this latest articleMatthias Noback talks about the "life and death of objects" in more detail including creating, updating and how they "die".

In the first part of this series we looked at ways to reduce the complexity of function bodies. The second part covered several strategies for reducing complexity even more, by getting rid of null in our code. In this article we'll zoom out a bit and look at how to properly organize the lifecycle of our objects, from creating them to changing them, letting them pass away and bringing them back from the dead.

He starts with a brief list of things that are true about objects (they live in memory, they hide implementation, etc) and some of the issues with poor object handling. He then gets into some of the basics: creating objects (meaningful & different ways), validating the input to constructors and methods and changing them to update properties and related objects. He also suggests preferring immutable objects and talks about value objects to help towards this goal. Finally he talks about the death of objects and some of the ways you can possibly "bring them back to life".

In this post to thePHP.cc siteSebastian Bergmann looks at validation data, both in the sense of user input and the contents of objects you're application is currently working with.

Validating data seems to be one of the most important tasks of an application. After all, you cannot trust data from external sources. So let us have a look at how to efficiently implement data validation.

He gives an example of a user profile with requirements on the data it should contain. He focuses on the email address property as it's one of the easier options to validate (or is it). He walks through the usual progression from controller injection to setter injection of the value but wonders when the validation should happen to keep the Profile object from becoming invalid. He points out that simply having a validate method perform the checks isn't enough as it may not always be called correctly, leading to potentially invalid objects. Instead he recommends an alternative - using a validator object/tool in the setters of your object instance as the values are set. This prevents the object from getting into an unknown state and provides immediate feedback to the developer when something's wrong.

The Full Stack Radio podcast, hosted by Adam Wathan, has posted their latest episode featuring guests Dave Marshall and Jeffrey Way. In this latest show they suggest you "don't mock what you don't own".

n this episode, Adam talks to recurring guests Jeffrey Way and Dave Marshall about "don't mock what you don't own". They talk about how to design code that needs to work with external services, how you should test that code, and the pitfalls you run into when you use mocks incorrectly in your test suite.

The SitePoint PHP blog has a tutorial they've posted (from author Andrew Carter) looking at the Flyweight design pattern and immutability, how they're a "perfect match". The flyweight pattern makes it possible to reuse objects after they've been created with one requirement: they must be immutable.

The fundamental principle behind the flyweight pattern is that memory can be saved by remembering objects after they have been created. Then, if the same objects need to be used again, resources do not have to be wasted recreating them. [...] You can think of the flyweight pattern as a modification to a conventional object factory.

One important feature of flyweight objects is that they are immutable. This means that they cannot be changed once they have been constructed. This is because our factory can only guarantee that it has remembered the correct object if it can also guarantee that the object it originally created has not been modified.

The post includes code examples of how to implement the pattern with a simple File object that fetches data from a file when created. He then creates the factory class, with a getFile method that takes in the path and creates the immutable File object from it. It's then stored in an internal array for potential reuse later. He also talks about how the pattern could be useful for handling enumeration objects and how you can use it to build out "type" objects.